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London mid-morning: Footsie in the doldrums
Wed, 08 Feb, 2012
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London mid-morning: Footsie in the doldrums
Thu, 1 Jul 2010, 10:43:00
London's top stocks remain becalmed after sentiment took a knock on a weak manufacturing report in China and a warning by Moody's over Spain's credit rating. In company news, Swiss engineer ABB said it will not match an offer by Emerson for electrical plugs and peripherals maker<b> Chloride</b>. Emerson trumped ABB's agreed offer with a bid worth 375p in cash or £1bn in total. ABB was offering 325p. Another piece of English heritage has gone west as <b>Tate & Lyle</b> sold the largest part of its sugars division to American Sugar Refining of the US for £211m - a deal that will see it lose its well known brand Lyle's Golden Syrup. <b>Cairn Energy</b> has started its summer drill programme off the coast of West Greenland with the Alpha prospect (Alpha-1) in the Sigguk Block, about 175km offshore Disko Island. The Edinburgh-based oil company is targeting the Alpha and T8 exploration prospects which lie in water depths of between 300 and 500 metres. It will take 55 days to drill to 4,200m at Alpha and 38 days to get down to 3,250m at T8, the firm estimates. An update is due in August. Telecoms giant <b>BT</b> plans to undercut Sky's Sports channels. BT Vision customers can add both Sky Sports 1 & 2 to the service for £16.99 a month, or either one for £11.99 a month, on a month by month basis. BT says the £11.99 bundle works out £205 cheaper than Sky's current equivalent deal and £281 cheaper than Virgin Media over a year. Guinness brewer and spirits distiller <b>Diageo</b> has reached agreement with its pension fund trustees on a 10-year funding arrangement for the UK pension scheme. It has been agreed that £197m which was agreed under the 2006 funding plan will be transferred to the UK scheme, which was £862m in deficit at the beginning of April 2009. <b>Barclays</b> has signed a joint venture agreement with Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (SMBC) and Nikko Cordial Securities, a wholly-owned subsidiary of SMBC, to provide wealth management services to high net worth individuals in Japan. Brewer <b>Greene King</b> saw profits rise for the year and said current year's trading is ahead of expectations. Pre-tax profit rose to £101.9m from £54.3m on revenue that increased 3.1% to £984.1m, helped in particular by the 3.5% growth in its retail business. Department store <b>Debenhams</b> said like-for-like sales decreased by 0.4% over the 42 weeks and added that it remains cautious about consumer confidence. The group said like-for-like sales were impacted by the strategy of improving gross margins by increasing the penetration of own bought trading space and by stronger comparatives in the third quarter of 2009. Energy services group <b>John Wood Group</b> said fall-out from the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is not expected to materially affect the company's performance this year. About 4% of annual revenue is related to new deep water developments in the Gulf. Not so, <b>Wellstream</b>, which designs and manufactures flexible risers and flowlines for the oil and gas industry. It warned that the recovery predicted for second half looks to be slower than expected and may result in some profit being delayed into 2011. Five-a-side football pitch operator <b>Goals Soccer</b> sees overall sales for the six months ended 30 June slightly ahead of 2009, but shares fell after it said full-year figures might come in towards the lower end of current market expectations.
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